Note 250 — Chapter XXI · GRECIAN EPIC.—HOMERIC POEMS.
Reading edition
Knight, Prolegom. Hom. c. xxxviii-xl. “Haud tamen ullum Homericorum carminum exemplar Pisistrati seculo antiquius extitisse, aut sexcentesimo prius anno ante C. N. scriptum fuisse, facile credam: rara enim et perdifficilis erat iis temporibus scriptura ob penuriam materiæ scribendo idoneæ, quum literas aut lapidibus exarare, aut tabulis ligneis aut laminis metalli alicujus insculpere oporteret.... Atque ideo memoriter retenta sunt, et hæc et alia veterum poetarum carmina, et per urbes et vicos et in principum virorum ædibus, decantata a rhapsodis. Neque mirandum est, ea per tot sæcula sic integra conservata esse, quoniam—per eos tradita erant, qui ab omnibus Græciæ et coloniarum regibus et civitatibus mercede satis amplâ conducti, omnia sua studia in iis ediscendis, retinendis, et rite recitandis, conferebant.” Compare Wolf, Prolegom. xxiv-xxv.
The evidences of early writing among the Greeks, and of written poems even anterior to Homer, may be seen collected in Kreuser (Vorfragen ueber Homeros, pp. 127-159, Frankfort, 1828). His proofs appear to me altogether inconclusive. Nitzsch maintains the same opinion (Histor. Homeri, Fasc. i. sect. xi. xvii. xviii.),—in my opinion, not more successfully: nor does Franz (Epigraphicê Græc. Introd. s. iv.) produce any new arguments.
I do not quite subscribe to Mr. Knight’s language, when he says that there is nothing wonderful in the long preservation of the Homeric poems unwritten. It is enough to maintain that the existence, and practical use of long manuscripts, by all the rhapsodes, under the condition and circumstances of the 8th and 9th centuries among the Greeks, would be a greater wonder.